HER
SWINGIN' '60s CREDENTIALS: This top teen model became
one of Hollywood's hot young things in the '60s and had starring roles in a number of
prominent movies that showed off her dramatic, comedic, and romantic acting abilities

CATEGORIES OF SWINGIN'
CHICK: Movie Star and TV Star

BIRTH: She was born on February 13th in '42, making her only seventeen when
the '60s started, just like Sandra Dee, another
teen idol. Her exotic birthplace: New York City. Her moniker at birth: Carole Ann Jones,
named after screen legend Carole Lombard.

IMPACT ON THE
'60s: Carol Lynley impressed millions of teenage boys
in the early '60s who correctly saw her as a cute, talented, hard-workin' actress who was
just a little older than they were. Among her best-known roles was Allison MacKenzie in
'61's Return to Peyton Place, the sequel to the '57 hit and the precursor of the
'64 TV series that had Mia Farrow as Allison. Carol also made a strong impression in the
sex comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree with Jack Lemmon in '63, alongside Ann-Margret and Pamela Tiffin on the trail of
husbands in Spain in The Pleasure Seekers in '64, and as a young mother in Otto
Preminger's thrilling Bunny Lake is Missing in '65, which she has said is still her
own personal fave among all her works.

CAREER IN THE
'60s: Carol averaged almost two movies a year during
the '60s. In addition to those mentioned above, Carol's highlights include Rock
Hudson/Kirk Douglas's The Last Sunset in '61, The Cardinal with Tom Tryon
and The Stripper with Joanne Woodward, both in '63, the Lauren Bacall melodrama Shock
Treatment in '64, the creepy The Shuttered Room in '67, and the wacky
Rowan & Martin and Julie Newmar comedy The Maltese Bippy in '69. One of her
more interesting roles was as the screen goddess in Harlow in '65, one of two
bio-pics with that title that year; the other, starring Carroll Baker, is probably more well-known, even though it came out six
weeks later. During the decade Carol was guesting on lots of big TV shows, too, among them
"The Virginian" in '62, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." in '64, "The
F.B.I." in '67, "The Invaders" in '67, "The Big Valley" in '68,
and "It Takes a Thief" in '69.

HER CAREER OUTSIDE THE
'60s: After Carol's parents separated when Carol was barely two, she became a child
model working in New York to help support her mom and little brother. She was making
commercials and getting a few minor TV appearances as a young teen when she scored a Life
magazine cover in '57. The photo caught the eye of Walt Disney, who put her in her first
movie, The Light in the Forest, when she was sixteen. Several movies came out in
'59, including Fabian's Hound-Dog Man and the British Blue Denim, when she
was nineteen and pregnant. She was also working on Broadway in the late '50s, among them
the Blue Denim role that she later played in the movie. Her momentum building
quickly, soon Carol inked a seven-year deal with 20th Century-Fox, and her '60s career
took off. In the '70s, she got instant notoriety for her well-received role as the
dazzling singer in hot pants on board the doomed ocean liner in The Poseidon Adventure,
'72. She was one of the few in the cast NOT killed off as soon as the ship turned over,
and so she was in virtually the entire movie (poor Stella Stevens was unfortunately lost two-thirds of the way through).
Carol also sang the movie's Oscar-winning theme song, "The Morning After." Her
other post-'60s movie highlights include The Cat and the Canary in '79, Blackout
in '88, and Howling VI in '91. She also starred in over a dozen TV movies in the
last thirty years, especially The Night Stalker in '72, Fantasy Island in
'77, plus appearances on lots of classic TV shows -- "Night Gallery" in '72,
"The Love Boat" in '77, "Hawaii Five-O" in '78, "Charlie's
Angels" in '80, and "The Fall Guy" in '83. She also returned to Broadway
for a starring role in Absurd Person Singular in '74, and she was in Of Mice and
Men in the spring of '75 at the Kennedy Center. In the '90s she was slated to have a
featured role as Agent Cooper's secretary in David Lynch's quirky TV series "Twin
Peaks," and though Cooper talks to and about that character, she was never seen
onscreen. By now Carol has been in almost sixty big-screen/little-screen movies, with
hundreds of appearances on TV. Today she lives and paints in Malibu.

TALENT: The sheer variety of her roles is impressive, everything from an
ingenue to a sex goddess to a menace to a romantic lead. Untrained as a singer, she still
belted out a respectable treatment of "The Morning After" in The Poseidon
Adventure, though some critics speculate that another singer's voice was used to
supplement some of her vocals.

HER '60s LOOK: Carol was an adorable young baby-faced starlet-to-be when she was on
the cover of Life, April 22nd in '57. Her beauty had a wholesome quality to it,
enabling her to play nuns in both a '62 episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"
and in the '70 TV movie Weekend of Terror. Still, she had a figure fit enough for
men's magazines, as proven by the ten-page spread given to her in Playboy in March
'65. In December of that year, she was also in the Playboy "Portfolio of Sex
Stars." Her most famous costume was the one she wore in The Poseidon Adventure,
which cast her as a band singer wearing tan go-go boots, white hot pants, an orange top
with a big brown pendant, a wide orange belt with fringe to the floor, and a white coat
also with fringe to the floor. It was perfect for the free-spirited early '70s, and Carol
looked great as always, though she had to lose all the accessories to make the difficult
climbs up through the ship once it turned over.

LIFESTYLE: At age eighteen Carol married publicist Michael Selsman in '60.
They had a daughter, writer Jill, two years later. Later Carol was romantically linked
with singers Frank Sinatra, Lee Hazelwood, and Gram Parsons, directors John Avildsen and
Roman Polanski, actors Red Buttons, James Earl Jones, Oliver Reed, Stuart Whitman, and Bud
Cort, producers Yoram Globus and Jack Haley, Jr., Monte Kay (who was the ex-husband of Diahann Carroll), L.A. Rams football
executive Don Klosterman, comedian Dick Martin, and most notably British talk-show host
David Frost, with whom she had an eighteen-year on-and-off relationship. There's a
remarkable fan site devoted to Carol called "The World's First Carol Lynley
Page," filled with trivia, interviews, and info, that site was one of the key sources
for our Carol Lynley page; at that site Carol dismisses many of the rumors about her love
life and describes the problems with trying to write a book about she's really
experienced:

"I've never been in a scandal. I've never been caught running
naked down the highway. I've not tried to shoot anybody. Nobody's ever tried to shoot me.
My child is legitimate ... I've never been to Betty Ford. I haven't been married
twenty-five times. My love life has been fairly sedate -- I was with one guy for seventeen
years and then one for eighteen years. I have no diseases, thank God. I've never battled
my way back from heroin addiction ... no porn ... no cocaine addiction, no drug
addictions, no prescription abuse ... I've outlived three of my doctors ... So if you're
going to write a juicy book, I've got a problem."

EXTRAS: When she was a model she used the name "Carolyn Lee," and
she wanted to use that as her stage name, but another actress already had it, so she used
the same sound with an altered spelling -- Carolyn Lee became Carol Lynley ... Carol's
part Iroquois, her grandfather was full-blooded ... at that "World's First
Carol" fan site mentioned above, Carol describes herself as a workaholic and an
acrophobiac -- that fear of heights came in to play while filming The Poseidon
Adventure, because scenes of Carol climbing high above the floor were actually shot
with her only about a foot off the ground, and doubles were used for any shots that would
have placed her up high ... one of the most remarkable aspects of The Poseidon
Adventure was its cast, which included five Oscar winners -- Gene Hackman, fresh off
his The French Connection triumph, double-Oscar-winner Shelley Winters, Red
Buttons, Jack Albertson, and Ernest Borgnine ... in December 2000 Carol told the San
Francisco Chronicle that The Poseidon Adventure is "the movie that refuses
to die. I was in 52 movies ... I have other things to do besides site home and watch
myself in them, like Gloria Swanson. But the one I will watch is Poseidon, to see
how it holds up. Every time I look at it, I go, 'OK, it still works'" ... Carol says
at that "World's First Carol" site that she'd jump at the chance to do a remake
of the '62 drama What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which originally paired Bette
Davis and Joan Crawford ... Carol would like to do it with another '60s star, Carroll Baker ... Carol calls Carroll "a
terrific lady -- nice to be around," adding "I would have loved to have done it
with Carroll because I think Carroll has been underrated as an actress -- and I think I
have been to a degree. I just thought it would give both of us an opportunity to show that
we are actually very talented actresses" ... Carol also claims at that Web site that
Roman Polanksi wrote his classic '66 thriller Repulsion with her in mind for the
lead role that was eventually played by Catherine
Deneuve ... Carol later turned down a chance to co-star with Jack Nicholson in '71's Five
Easy Pieces, she would've played the Susan Anspach role ... Carroll also commented to
the S.F. Chronicle in December 2000 about the state of her career: "Hollywood
is afraid of middle-age women. I think it has something to do with menopause. But I feel
I'm going to have a latter-day career like Jessica Tandy and Ruth Gordon. I don't mean to
sound conceited, but I am a very talented actress and I have my head screwed on right. I'm
not going to drug clinics. I look good, and I've got all my marbles. So I really believe
I'll be back" ... some of the photos shown on this page were generously sent to us by
photo archivist Peter Alles ... see our Minx Linx
page for the URL for that great Carol fan site.

Click on the linkage
in the Table o' Contents on the left to select another Swingin' Chick of the '60s, baby.